**Disclaimer: The characters and situations of Harry Potter depicted in this story are the legal property of J. K. Rowling, Bloomsbury, and AOL Time Warner, and have been used without permission. No copyright infringement is intended, and no profit is being made.
**Rated M for: A brief description of sexual contact.
Author's Note: This little thing has been sitting on my hard drive for more than a year at this point. It was originally meant to be the beginning of a story, or a collection of stories about what immediately followed the end of the war. Looking around, however, this ground is well-travelled by other writers and I find I have little to say that has not been said. So, I have scrapped the plan to turn this into a larger work, and will instead periodically post one-shots that focus just on the moments that are most important to me.
What follows in this posting may not be particularly original, but it was meant to be a study in contrasts between the psyches of two very different girls in a moment of triumph and trauma, the difference in reaction to the end of the war and the end of the final battle. They are meant to be transparently opposite. I hope you like it.
After and Before
Ginny was certain she had never been more tired. The battle was over. There was a deep cut over her eyebrow that kept trickling blood into her eye. Something had crashed into her knee hours ago and she was beginning to wonder if it was sprained. And her brother was dead.
She wanted to collapse, but…Harry.
She hadn't seen him, really seen him, since the conclusion of the battle in the middle of the Great Hall. She hadn't spoken to him since the Room of Requirement.
There wasn't really a plan. Ginny was just wandering around, her eyes scanning the crowds more or less numbly. She would know him when she saw him. She would feel again when she saw him. Of course, she had no idea where he was.
"Neville?" Her voice was so small. How humiliating.
"Yes?" And he was speaking to her gently. She didn't like that.
"Where's Harry?" Oh God, she hadn't meant to sound so lost.
He moved to comfort her but she pulled away. "He left with Ron and Hermione—slipped away under his Invisibility Cloak, Luna says. I think they went somewhere to talk."
"Oh."
Of course he would want to see them. They were his best friends and they had taken every leg of this journey with him. This was their victory. But…didn't he need to see her as badly as she needed to see him?
She left Neville and continued to wander.
She stumbled from room to room, peeking in through the doors and sometimes entering to check cupboards and corners, the details escaping her. Ginny's feet carried herself anywhere and everywhere but the Great Hall. Her family was there right now. Fred was there. It was the last place she wanted to be.
She froze when her foot came into contact with something unfamiliar. It was silly, but it took her a moment to realize what it was. White, slimy skin like raw chicken wrapped in smelly black robes, just lying there against the wall. Details like this were still being seen to. Her brother was lying on the floor as well. Morbid—it was all too morbid, these dead bodies on floors.
"Disgusting, isn't he?"
Ginny startled. She hadn't realized that there was someone else nearby. It was just barely too dark in the room to make out the speaker's face, but then the torchlight caught the white blond of his hair and Ginny took in his posture.
"Feel free to kick the body a few times," Malfoy continued. "I did."
She tried to summon her voice, but found she couldn't respond to that.
"Bastard terrified me, you know that? Threatened to kill my mother, told me he'd find me if I ran no matter where I went—and I believed him. Because he was the Dark Lord and he was all powerful, he was God. Potter casts one spell, just one. No duel, no battle, just one spell and he's dead." Malfoy shifted. "After all that, he was just a man."
She opened her mouth to speak. She wanted to tell him to shut up, or to go to hell—really, after all that he'd done…the nerve of the wanker. But what came out instead was, "Do you know where Harry went?" She supposed she couldn't spare the energy.
There was a pause that felt infinitely long to Ginny before he replied, almost as though it had taken Malfoy a moment register her words. "Weasley and Granger passed by a while ago and I think they were talking about him going up to Gryffindor Tower to sleep." There was a dead quality to his words, as if he were reciting information that should have meant something to him, but did not.
Ginny turned around and left. She limped her way up seven flights of stairs, closing her eyes at the sight of all the broken relics and adornments of the castle, and the blood. She didn't remember much about the journey; she was just thankful that she had made the trip enough times in her life that she didn't have to think.
When she turned down the corridor to where the Fat Lady guarded the entrance she quickened her pace. Close. He was close now.
The Fat Lady was awake. "Oh my dear," she said sympathetically as she observed the girl before her. "Don't you look a fright."
"Did Harry Potter pass through here?"
"Why, yes. He didn't have the password, but I didn't have the heart to turn him away."
Ginny bit her lower lip. "I don't know the password either."
The Fat Lady considered that. For a moment Ginny was certain that she would be denied entry and that she would have to wait until a Gryffindor who hadn't been in hiding for months happened by. She felt her eyes filling with tears, and that may have swayed the sentry.
"Go ahead, dear," she said gently, and the portrait swung open.
The tears spilled over in Ginny's eyes anyway as she climbed into the common room. She wiped them away impatiently. "Harry?" she called, but there was no answer.
He must have gone upstairs to his dormitory. Stairs. More stupid stairs, and her knee hurt so badly she was worried about collapsing. But she made it. In a haze, she made it, and soon she was staring at the door to his dormitory. She thought of knocking, but opened the door without instead.
He was sitting on a bed near a window, the morning light shining on him as he took large bites of a sandwich. He was eating? How could he possibly eat after everything that had happened?
His head shot up at the sound of her entry. It was apparent that he still had some adrenaline from the battle in his system, and his wand was in his hand before she had even taken a step.
"I-it's me," she managed softly. She didn't have the energy for this, and her nerves were too raw. Damn it, she was going to cry again.
It was obvious that he couldn't see her as clearly as she could see him, and he took a step or two toward her before he seemed to realize who "me" was.
He had been gone for a long time—almost a year. He was thinner than usual, as though his quest had left him more starved than even a summer with the Dursleys. His hair was so long that the back of it dusted his shoulders, and it looked as though he hadn't shaved in a day or two. He looked worn and hardened. Tonight he had killed and he had been killed. He wasn't a boy anymore, but a man. And he no longer recognized the sound of her voice.
"Gin?" he asked, lowering his wand.
Biting her lip, she nodded.
Harry made a strange noise in his throat. He took two great strides and swept her up against him. She hung limply in his arms like a rag doll as he buried his face in her neck and hair. He didn't say that he missed her, or that he was happy she was safe, but the way he held her told her just the same.
Her arms encircled his neck and she clutched him tightly. Her tears flowed freely now as her hand found its way into his hair. When he tried to pull back, she didn't let him.
"You…you were dead," she whispered. "When Hagrid brought you, you were dead."
He was silent for a time before he said, "No. No, I never was. Just pretending."
She choked on a sob. "Don't ever do that again."
He kissed her scalp.
She loosened her grip on him, and he stepped back. Harry cupped her face in his hands and gazed at her hungrily. Ginny looked down; there was no way he would find what he was looking for her in her dirty, bloody face.
"Would you like half of my sandwich?" he offered kindly.
Ginny shook her head. She wouldn't be able to keep it down.
He led her over to where he had been sitting before, and she woodenly lowered herself to the bed beside him.
"I could eat the entire Hogwarts larder," he wearily confessed.
They sat in silence while he ate, and he did not release her hand. His grip kept her anchored to him, yet the numbness had not abated. She felt as though she might drift away and be lost if he let go. She squeezed his hand in return and felt a desperation rising in her. She needed more.
As he wiped the crumbs of his finished meal on his jeans, Ginny managed to speak. "Harry, would…would you kiss me?"
If he thought that was a strange request for the moment, he didn't show it.
It was a soft kiss, tiny and chaste, as their kisses so often were. Harry's inexperience with girls was rarely so apparent as when he kissed her. Unless she took things to the next level, he had neither the confidence nor the knack for more passionate fare. When she had pulled him into her bedroom before he left for his quest, she had meant to seduce him. Had it been up to her, she and Harry would not have parted last fall as virgins. Of course, Ron had thoroughly ruined any hope of that.
It was unjust. What if he had died? What if she had? And they'd never had a chance to…. That would have been…just horrible.
She was crying again—again!—but she soothed all of her heartbreak and fear with her kisses. He was safe, he was here, and she would never let him out of her sight again.
Her general aggressiveness took over and it wasn't long before she and Harry were shedding clothing. It was tricky, what with their injuries, but she was determined. In a matter of minutes her virginity was officially gone. It was less pleasurable than it was uncomfortable—even painful. The cause of that wasn't so much the usual breaking of the hymen. Ginny was too athletic and had spent far too much time flying for there to have been anything of that left. Rather it was more that she wasn't aroused in the least.
Harry was whispering things to her. Nice things, about how much she meant to him and how beautiful she was, but the words went through her like a cipher and she knew she would never be able to repeat them.
She had to grit her teeth, force herself to keep moving atop him. It felt unnatural and alien, having him inside her, and she felt herself getting queasy. Thankfully, Harry didn't last long.
Afterward, he pulled her to him, but fell asleep almost immediately. She understood that this was because of the long and terrible day he'd had. And yet, she hated him for leaving her alone in the cold dormitory.
His snores mingled with the sound of her quiet whimpers as she pulled away from him. She scooted until her back was propped against a bedpost at his feet.
Harry had driven her to distraction for years, the inevitable result of hero worship, puppy love, and an adolescent girl's awakening bodily desires. When he kissed her, she had often felt herself on the brink of throwing herself at him completely. All those times she'd held herself back, only to lose control now. Now when what drove her was not lust, or even love. It was wracking desperation, a great gaping hole she needed filled. She had needed proof that there was more than this—more than the body, more than the here and now. Proof of the human soul.
But it never happened. There had been nothing transcendent about the experience at all, and she had been so aware of her physicality that she could focus on nothing else. Though Harry had filled her, stretched her, the void had remained. It grew even, because rather than becoming one with him, something she had been told on good authority was the result of a coupling between a man and woman who loved each other, she had never felt more separate in her life.
She began to hyperventilate, her hands trembling violently. Ginny gripped the bedpost behind her in an attempt to steady her shaking. She whispered to herself that they had won. It was over, the bastard was dead and they had won. It was the dawn of a new day and everything would be all right.
But she couldn't make herself believe it. After all, Hogwarts was in ruin, her blood was all over these bed sheets, and her brother was dead. Nothing would ever be all right ever again.
Hermione hadn't slept, really slept, in days, but she found she was not tired. The battle was over, and there was still so much to be done. Restlessness skittered through her veins, and she rocked the baby sleeping against her shoulder.
The air was heavy with low voices: sobbing, moaning voices of the grieving; steady, somber voices of the consoling. McGonagall was organizing the collection of bodies from the castle and grounds, and making lists of those who needed to be contacted with the news of a fallen loved one. Neville seemed to have become her point man in this task.
Families bent over the dead, their anguish fresh and wet. The woman beside Hermione was one such person. Andromeda Tonks held herself with dignity, but her tears flowed freely as she knelt beside the bodies of her daughter and son-in-law. Even after the horrors Hermione had experienced, the sight of Tonks and Lupin side by side and still was one that made her insides churn.
She looked down at their child, Teddy, dozing quite peacefully. Had she taken time to consider, she might have been reluctant to take the baby. Hermione had not held many in her lifetime; as the only child of two only children she had no small cousins, nieces or nephews. Babies seemed such fragile, messy things. But Mrs. Tonks had clearly needed help, and so she had offered without thought. Strangely, Hermione found herself comfortable in a matter of moments. The sweet patter of his tiny heartbeat against her chest was comforting given the circumstances.
Hermione's eyes drifted and landed, as they always seemed to, on Ron. He stood erect, his arms around his shaking mother. He looked so sturdy and brave, but Hermione knew that inside he must be crumbling. Somehow the task of being strong for Mrs. Weasley had fallen to him. Mr. Weasley was speaking with McGonagall and Kingsley in hushed, grave whispers; Bill and Charlie were helping to gather and carry the dead; Percy leaned against the wall, glassy-eyed with shock; and George and Ginny were nowhere to be found. None of the Weasleys let their gaze wander to the sheet that covered Fred.
Luna, who was bringing tea to the bereaved, delivered a cup to Mrs. Tonks. She met eyes with Hermione and smiled weakly in greeting, but that smile faded as her eyes caught something over Hermione's shoulder. Turning slightly so that she could see what it was, Hermione clenched her jaw.
Draco Malfoy was rejoining his parents where they sat, huddled and bruised at a long table, trying to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. Malfoy's mother pulled him close and kissed the top of his head.
Hermione had not forgotten that she had been tortured for information in their home, nor that Luna had been kept prisoner in their cellar for months. It seemed profane that they should be here, that their family should remain intact when Ron's….
She turned back to Luna, only to see that the younger girl was gone.
Mrs. Tonks rose from where she had been crouched, her face now something near composed. She draped a sheet over Tonks and Lupin, and spoke in a calm voice to a man that Hermione did not know, one from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
"You may deliver them to me tomorrow. By then I will have made the arrangements with the cemetery."
He had a few further questions, and Mrs. Tonks answered them while she sipped her tea. Hermione waited patiently.
When all the arrangements had been made, Mrs. Tonks turned her attention to the girl holding her grandson. "Thank you very much for all of your help."
"It was no trouble," Hermione insisted.
"Well, I'm afraid I cannot bear to be in this building for another moment, so I'll be on my way." She tugged the collar of her cloak tighter, though the weather outside would be warm.
"Of course." Hermione prepared to hand over Teddy, but all at once became perplexed as to how to accomplish that without waking the infant.
When she looked to Mrs. Tonks for guidance, she saw that the woman's attention had gone intently to something across the room. Before Hermione could ascertain what that might be, Mrs. Tonks had started making her way in that direction. Hermione followed, and found herself shocked when she realized that they had stopped before the corpse of Bellatrix Lestrange.
Hermione knew that Bellatrix had been the one who had killed Tonks, but somehow it had not really resonated with her before that moment that Bellatrix and Andromeda were sisters. The resemblance was more striking than it should have been given the circumstances; one was softer in death than she had ever been in life, and the other looked very much like death in this moment. Hermione sickened at what that actually meant in this moment—for one's sister to have killed one's child.
Hermione was stiff, awkward, and unsure. She did her best to read the expression on Mrs. Tonks' face, but found the hard wrinkles and dark eyes inscrutable. After a very long minute, the woman knelt beside her sister and pulled a sheet up over her, almost gently, as though tucking a child in at bedtime. Her face showed none of this softness, however, and when the man from the ministry approached asking if this body was to be delivered to her home as well, Mrs. Tonks shook her head.
"This one should be sent to Malfoy Manor." She looked at him squarely. "I'll not have this grave anywhere near my family."
The ministry man nodded and tripped over his words in his reply. But Hermione was still thinking of the tender way that Mrs. Tonks had covered that evil woman with the sheet. She couldn't help but think that she was more than a little out of her depth in this area. Bellatrix here on the floor, Narcissa across the room, not venturing near this spot even once, and Andromeda who was done with her sister, even in death, but still clearly saying goodbye. Fred on the floor under a sheet of his own, his brothers and sister scattered and lost without him. It was something an only child could understand only in theory.
Mrs. Tonks held out her arms, and Hermione passed her the sleeping baby as carefully as she could manage.
After the departure of Mrs. Tonks and Teddy, Hermione found herself helping Neville identify the body of a girl who had been found near the Charms classroom. After that, the House Elves needed assistance getting rid of a wounded Acromantula that had found its way into the kitchen, a task for which Hermione had the aid of Bill and Charlie. Every job ended with the beginning of another; there was always one more thing that needed doing before a break could conscionably be taken. Eventually, the adrenaline left her and Hermione found herself tired, but it wasn't until Professor McGonagall instructed her point blank to go to bed that Hermione did so.
She wandered for a couple of minutes, searching for a cot somewhere because she did not wish to go all the way up to Gryffindor Tower and her old bed. In the crowded second room she tried, she found a cot inhabited by Ron. He was not sleeping.
Hermione took a moment to really appreciate the sight of him. He was alive. Both of her boys were, and that was such wonderful way to win this awful war. She had never dared to hope that it would end with the three of them intact. Her foolish, brave boys, who would throw themselves at death without a thought.
Honestly, she felt guilty. What was wrong with her? Surrounded by the grieving, she was relieved. Those that she loved most were safe, and the ugliness that had seemed like it would go on forever was over.
She approached the cot. His eyes were sunken, his skin pale and dirty. Her Ron…her heart went out to him.
"May I join you?" she asked.
His eyes darted to her. There was a beat in which he didn't seem to know how to react to her request.
Hermione chewed her lip. The kiss they had shared earlier had changed their relationship forever, but this was a deliberate second step down that path. Instead of declaring the kiss a mistake, or a leap come too soon, she was reaffirming it: she wanted to go forward. If less had happened today, the bigness of this moment might have weighed more on Hermione—this was something she had thought about, wanted for several years now. But she was tired. History had happened in this castle last night, and asking to sleep with Ron seemed like a small event by comparison. When he moved over to make room for her, she settled into the crook of his arm with her head on his chest, and it didn't feel like something new—it felt like coming home.
They did not speak, but the other people in the room kept up a constant low murmur. Ron smelled of sweat and dirt, maybe a bit like singed feathers too. The flesh of Ron's chest was more hard than soft against her cheek, she could feel his muscle and the bones of his ribs, and that made it less than comfortable. But she could also hear his heartbeat, louder than Teddy's, but just like with the infant, the pulse of sound and movement was comforting.
Ron's arms came up to encircle her, and Hermione felt herself sinking further into him. Sleep was finally coming to her. She felt truly safe for the first time in years. She knew that there was still so much to be done, that there were Death Eaters unaccounted for, and funerals stretching for weeks. But she couldn't bring herself to be suitably dour. The war was over, Harry had won, and Ron's heart was beating in her ear. It was the dawn of a new day.
I hope you enjoyed the story! Please review. : )